During recent years, Egypt water treatment plants allocated on the banks of River Nile have
faced few accidents of hydrocarbon spills into the River which forced the operators to shout
down many plants from Aswan to Cairo. Nevertheless, water supply applying the natural and
low-cost technique called riverbank filtration "RBF" has been used worldwide. For more than
100 years, RBF that has been used in Europe for public and industrial water supply along
Rhine, Elbe, and Danube rivers. In RBF method, the surface water contaminants are removed
or degraded as the infiltrating water moves from the river or lake to the abstraction wells.
Physical, chemical, and biological treatment processes occur during this technique. In this
work, RBF site which is located in east bank of river Nile at Upper Egypt was investigated.
This site was established to supply potable water to the construction staff of about 3000
residents, of the new Naga Hammadi Barrage, Qena governorate. It consists of two productive
wells of 55 m depth located at 100 m apart from River Nile. No further treatment processes
were used except disinfection applying chlorine as calcium hypochlorite. Water samples from
abstraction wells were collected for physiochemical and microbiological measurements.
Quality analysis of the samples indicates that the produced water using RBF technique
complies with allowable standards for drinking purposes. The results have proven RBF
effectiveness for water supply from river Nile in Upper Egypt and motivate its integration
with tradition plants to secure water supply from Nile during the chemical pollution of Nile.